Pathway to Solar Powered Green University Campus in Malaysia : A Review

Solar energy can be used as non-fossil clean energy to light our universities. With the prevailing economic recession and global warming, universities can reduce the cost of electricity through self-sustaining solar energy. As a separate entity, the university can operate as an island with sufficient resources to meet her energy demands. With a view to establishing a green university campus, solar energy has evolved as a major technology to harness and aggregate available renewable energy sources (RES) to reduce the ecological footprint. This paper reviews existing university campus solar energy around the world, highlighting their objectives, methods, challenges, and results. One of these objectives is to serve as a test-bed or laboratory in which students and faculty staff conduct research to advance the modern power system. Solar Photovoltaic (Rooftop PV) remains the major RES in the implementation of green campus, however, a hybrid system is also common. The review shows that solar energy if well designed among other benefits results in a significant reduction in the operation cost of the university and leads to the green campus goal in Malaysia